


Observational Rigor

by viceroyvonmutini



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, oh no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceroyvonmutini/pseuds/viceroyvonmutini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not all in her head, possibly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Observational Rigor

**Author's Note:**

> anon prompt: Erin tries to fight her growing attraction and feelings for Holtzmann but realizes she can't fight them anymore.
> 
> Firstly, I wrote this during my shift today behind the counter. Don't tell my employer. Secondly, it turns out it's just incredibly hard to get their speech ticks into words on a page. I tried messing with commas and stuff. Just read it how you want I don't even know anymore it's 1am. 
> 
> Science and maths is recreational for me, so I don't actually know maybe you can calculate the limit of an exponentially increasing function I can't remember, but for the sake of the metaphor...

‘Not a good idea.’

Erin jerked her hand back, trying to determine where the voice had come from.

‘Holtz?’

‘I mean you _can_ touch it. If you want.’ Erin looked at the seemingly innocuous pile of metal, and took a half-shuffle back. ‘But better safe.’

Erin refrained from remarking that Holtz herself was never safe, or sorry about that fact. In fact, she always seemed a little delighted.

‘What is it?’

Holtz popped into her line of sight, out from behind a prototype containment facility. Three layers of small, thin wiring hung precariously around her neck, and she had in her hand what looked like the circuit board of an early model VCR.

‘Don’t know.’

Erin got the unspoken message. Probably safer to just…not touch anything, whether it was reactive or not. If Holtz was honest, half the stuff in here wouldn’t do more than offer a mild static shock if touched, but months of observation had told her Erin Gilbert would prefer not to experience that at all. And she sort of had a reputation to maintain. And it was better to avoid the very slim chance that Erin might choose to touch something deadly.

‘So.’ Holtz was looking at her, straight on and focused and eyes full of amusement.

‘Food. The take out arrived if…you want to…do that.’

‘Sure.’

‘Okay then. See you...down there.’

Erin walked backwards out the door, leaving Holtz alone. Erin was never particularly great with people, but she always seemed to make it ten times more awkward when it came to Holtzmann, and every single time she vowed that the next time she would act like a functioning human being, and every single time she failed.

 

* * *

 

Holtzmann liked to watch. Observe maybe sounded three hundred percent less creepy, but it wasn’t meant to be creepy. She wasn’t trying to be creepy. She liked to strip wires, legs up on the desk, taking her time stripping the seemingly endless insulation, and watching. It wasn’t creepy, it was just observation. It was barely noticeable. At least, Erin imagined that it was meant to be barely noticeable, because no one else seemed to notice it, or care about it, or acknowledge it in any way. Which didn’t really make any sense, because it was making her feel very untethered and just a step out of beat, or what she imagined was a step out of beat, because that was the whole ‘untethered’ thing, because if she was putting so much effort into not noticing Holtzmann’s unnoticeable eyes then what was to say the others weren’t doing the same as her and they were all just being polite, and all of them were in on some great conspiracy to respectfully tolerate Holtzmann’s really, really intense eyes that seemed to send these laser shivers ripping across her body, making everything she did ten times more shaky, and terrifying and…sweaty.

‘I’m just saying that it’s statistically highly improbable a Class-II could do this,’ said Abby, on the brink of a heated debate.

‘Uh, I don’t know whether you’ve noticed but we live with the improbable Abby. It’s a ghost. I don’t think it cares.’

‘Patty has a point,’ began Erin, and Abby rounded on her, in despair at the betrayal. ‘The classification system is at best, a guideline, and at worst: totally arbitrary.’

‘Exactly,’ declared Patty. ‘Ghosts don’t care. Hell, none of us care. Holtzmann breaks physics every day.’

Erin shot a look over her shoulder – finally – at the woman who’d been mapping the topography of her back in great detail for the past twenty minutes; or at least, that’s what it felt like.

‘It’s true.’

Erin turned back to the others, trying not to linger, to just try and stop that…tingly, scrutinized feeling whenever Holtzmann was involved, and hoping no one had noticed.

Holtzmann had noticed. Noticed something. Something that wasn’t related to Kevin, or to ghost-hunting, or physics, or any of the things she’d first thought of before she thought of the highly statistically improbable. It wasn’t like she hadn’t noticed Erin, because of course she had noticed Erin in a way that had begun as ‘aesthetically pleasing’ and was now well into the ‘emotionally affected’ stage. So Holtzmann knew, really, about Erin noticing her noticing, and knew why she was noticing Erin, but she was just the sort to push, and push, and push – just to make sure. Only this time it seemed to paying off, and Holtzmann did try to blame Kevin first, and ghost-hunting, and physics, before she attributed any of Erin’s actions to her own testy flirtations. And now it felt like that same sense of euphoria she got right before making something glitz with power for the first time: that it wasn’t final, or complete, but something was there that only begot more discovery, and sparks, and everything else that came with it.

So Holtzmann hadn’t exactly stopped herself from staring at Erin for extended periods of time, watching her just for the pleasure of it. And it wasn’t as if she was stopping herself from sending a few not-strictly-entirely-joking winks her way, or tipping her body at a 45-degree angle into Erin’s personal space every time the woman decided to come over and check on a contraption, or indulge discussion on the validity of powering the firehouse with a small(ish) nuclear reactor plumbed right underneath the foundations housed in a hermetically sealed, 30-inch thick lead-lined room.

Erin wasn’t, then, totally imagining that ubiquitous stare of Holtz’s, but she didn’t know that. And it wasn’t as if she could just walk up to her and tell her to…not. Do it. The staring. The…anything, because despite endless attempts to not touch Holtzmann ever, she always seemed to end up right behind her, leaning over her right shoulder, down so close that her newly auburn hair brushed ever so slightly against Holtzmann’s cheek as she explained the necessity of grounding the Nutcracker.

‘-Kaboom.’

‘Are you sure this is…necessary, Holtz?’

Holtz shrugged. ‘Why not.’

Erin stared at the terrifying – now complete – contraption, letting the silence settle and maybe, just maybe, she was enjoying the feeling of Holtzmann so close, and attentive, and she was desperately fighting the urge to turn her head to the left and study every nanometer of her face.

Eventually she stood up straight, willfully ignoring the realization that while she had be fastidiously facing forward, Holtzmann’s eyes had fixed to her face, and she desperately ignored the weird jittery thing that realization made her feel too.

‘Why not,’ she repeated lightly.

 

* * *

 

 

If you draw a graph charting the results of almost any form of scientific experiment, one of two things will most likely happen.

One: The graph will reach a peak, and plateau.

Two: The graph will continue to exponentially increase or decrease so that no limit can theoretically or otherwise be discovered by modern mathematics.

Erin was definitely Number Two. If she had to call herself a graph. Which, admittedly, was not something she did often. But it was the only way she could begin to think about this…situation she now found herself in. Because she’d had crushes – everyone had crushes, and even she had had crushes, but she knew what that was, and what that felt like, and _this_ – whatever this was – was not that. Because crushes were manageable, and short infatuation was to be expected every once in a while, but the difference between a crush and a not-crush was that at least a crush had an _end_. And was a known quantity. And manageable. And wouldn’t keep sneaking up on her like a T-I vapor from an air conditioning unit.

All of the team had eventually worked out a level of understanding with Holtzmann. Sure, they might still struggle with the odd, apparently-unrelated-yet-later-proved-incredibly-apt word association that Holtz often inspired, but all in all it worked well. On the same frequency. A frequency that seemed to make only Erin thrum whenever Holtz was in the vicinity with something like excitement and nerves and all the things people never really manage to articulate in the phrase ‘you’ll know.’

Because she knew, she did, that this wasn’t just a not-crush. And that was fine, because it wasn’t like she didn’t live with the woman, and spend a significant amount of her day with the woman, and Holtz, Erin had noticed, was particularly permissive considering Erin was really, _really_ bad at not spending time on the second floor, and just so happening to end up sat next to Holtz when they all decide to watch a movie, and just so happening to like pineapple on pizza because Holtz did too, and Erin was so desperate she was willingly simply to be allowed to share the woman’s pizza.

Holtz liked it. At this point it was about 94.87% certain Erin liked her too, so she was more than willing to present Erin with numerous opportunities to spend time with her, like letting her read in a nest of beanbags and pillows and blankets that she had brought from downstairs in a corner of her floor.

But it wasn’t – would never be – a hundred percent certain that Erin really did like her in that same way that made her feel like the LHC on full power every time Erin smiled, or laughed, or every time she made Erin laugh, or every time Erin chewed her pen in frustration, or ranted about an incomplete proof, or finally relaxed in an old MIT sweater that was definitely Holtzmann’s, and they both knew it, but it was a sweater, and Holtz liked seeing it on her, and Erin liked wearing it and that was fine. So Holtz said nothing at all about any of it, because she was a pro with near-death inducing materials and never launched into the next phase unless she was certain she could control the radioactive fallout, and for the first time since high school she felt like if this went wrong no amount of fire extinguishers and Uranium cooling reactors would be able to fix it.

But Erin, curled deep in her blanket/beanbag fortress on Holtz’s floor, really was struggling. Because Holtzmann hadn’t really asked to sit down with her on the fringes of her sanctuary, she just had. Sat herself down. Legs splayed, glasses hanging underneath her chin, overalls half undone so the dark green crop top she wore underneath was in full view, and Erin was trying to read her drafts for their latest book but Holtz was sat two feet away, mini-screwdriver in hand as she tinkered with the contraption between her legs.

Erin decided to at least have the decency to stare at her sheets of paper, pen hanging limp in her hand.

‘Whatcha making?’

Holtz looked up at her, idly screwing a screw in place, and grinned.

‘Not sure yet. Something useful.’

Erin couldn’t help but smile back, even if she had no idea how Holtz did it. How her mind worked. How she ended up sitting her with this woman: two-parts genius, one-part inadvertently the sexiest being alive, and maybe three-parts the focus of most of Erin’s waking moments.

Holtz returned to her work, but Erin was still staring.

‘Holtz.’

She looked up.

‘Erin.’ And when she met her eyes her mind went blank, because Erin looked like she was about to say something that was about as destructive as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity on the scientific thinking of the day. Or Freud’s impact on 20th century thinking. And Holtz stopped the Freud thing right then and there because that was a hole she was never going to climb out of.

Erin seemed frozen, and Holtz wanted to help, but this wasn’t something she could do. It wasn’t in there, in her grasp, and so all she could do was look, waiting for Erin to struggle through. Useless herself.

‘I…Holtz, I feel guilty.’

Holtz tilted her head. Erin continued, eyes fixed on her draft. ‘I feel guilty because I’m using your time, and you’re a friend.’

‘That’s what friends are for.’

‘Right. But not…this.’

‘This.’

‘You know, right? I mean, please tell me you do because otherwise this is going to be more embarrassing than that time I ran across campus with only whipped cream for covering, and that was beyond mortifying, and all Abby’s fault, but this? This is-‘

‘Tell me more about the whipped cream Erin.’

Erin finally looked up, and she could hear the teasing in Holtz’s voice but she knew with the way Holtz was looking at her that every word was hitting it’s mark, or hitting something, and Holtz was trying.

‘Can I tell you about it later?’ she asked tentatively.

Holtz nodded once.

‘Sure. Whenever.’

‘It’s just I’m trying to…you know, _say_ something and in my head-‘

‘I know.’

‘-it sort of…I don’t know I didn’t really think about it all because-‘

‘Of unknown variables.’

‘-of unknown variables, and wishful thi-wait.’

Erin looked at her.

‘Yeah?’

‘You know?’

‘Sure. How could I not.’

‘And…wait, are we talking about the same thinking? You’re not talking about like…Freud are you?’

‘Freud? Why would I be thinking about him?’

‘Never mind.’

‘I was though, like a few minutes ago.’

‘You were?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

Holtzmann shrugged, but didn’t provide any further answer. Erin shook her head to clear it.

‘So…are we on the same page?’

Holtz didn’t answer right away and Erin wondered whether they _were_ on the same page.

‘Yes. Definitely.’

Oh. So, you know. That I…and…’

Holtzmann let out a lip-vibrating breath, filled with desperation, and Erin listened to the descending tone of the noise.

‘Uh…I know you’ve been watching me, and stuff, and I’ve definitely been watching you, and I like the way you wear my clothes and the way you brush my arm sometimes, and stuff, and I hate sentimental but I can try and do romantic and stuff and now I said the word so I guess the cat is out of the bag and we can absolutely shove it back in the back that’s fine. If you want.’

Holtz’s eyes had firmly avoided Erin, fixed on the floor space between her legs. Erin waited; she waited for her mind to catch up.

‘I don’t want to.’ Erin’s voice was soft. ‘Shove the cat back in the bag.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right.’

‘Holtz. Look at me.’

She shook her head.

‘Holtz.’

She continued to shake her head vigorously.

‘Holtz, look at me.’

‘No.’

Erin waited.

‘Holtz.’

She didn’t receive and answer, and so decided to do something so monumentally stupid just to get Holtz to look at her that even as she put aside her drafts on the floor beside her, and unfurled herself from underneath her blankets, and began to crawl forward to where Holtzmann sat, she was fully aware of just how stupid this idea was and just how much this might backfire.

‘Holtz…’ Her voice trailed off, and this time it was more of a warning because Erin brushed tentative fingertips against her cheek, and Holtz tensed for just a second because _that_ was unexpected, and unexpectedly nice, and that shouldn’t surprise her but it does because she shouldn’t want Erin to touch her, or like Erin to touch her, because she doesn’t like sincere touching from anyone, but Erin is different and new and so Holtz leans in to the touch ever so slightly and turns her head at Erin’s gentle coaxing.

She would have responded verbally but Erin had committed, and Holtz didn’t really have a choice in the matter of what was their first kiss. Not that she minded, because despite the initial hesitation Erin was surprisingly assertive, and Holtz liked the way time seemed to stop just for Erin, and focus on Erin, and the whole goddamn world was just Erin.

‘Okay then,’ breathed Holtz, resting against Erin’s shoulder as Erin positioned herself wordlessly, to allow Holtz the comfort of…of her.

‘Yep.’

‘Can I…can we do that again some time?’

Erin laughed, and Holtz liked the way she could feel it rattle through her body, and was pleased to find that yes – she still gained immeasurable pleasure from making Erin laugh, and nothing had changed.

‘Whenever you want, Holtzmann.’

Holtz looked up at her and Erin met the gaze, trying just to figure out how the hell she’d made it this far without sweating out 75% of her total water mass.

‘ _Whenever_ I want?’ probed Holtz.

‘Well, no, I mean within reason. Maybe sometimes not within reason but not like…when…I…’

Holtz laughed. A full one, too. Just a few short barks of it, and Erin considered that a win, even forgiving her for the back-to-Holtz’s-good-old-self teasing.

‘Yes. Whenever you want Holtz.’


End file.
